Reloading for the .204

[Silverfox_ND]

Alan-- The maximum length listed for the .204 Ruger casing is 1.850" and the trim lenght is 1.840" If you measure the chamber length with something like the Sinclair chamber length gage, you'll probably find that your chamber length is somewhere in the 1.860 to 1.875" range. I have a Savage 12VLP in .204 Ruger and my chamber measured 1.877".

I checked the length on my once fired factory Hornady brass and settled on trimming it to 1.8425". That was the length of the shortest fired casing. I load my shells pretty hot, but the case stretching is not too bad. Since I trim my casings EVERY TIME I resize them, I don't worry about the casings being too long.

Forster makes a .20 caliber pilot for their case trimmer and if you have a Wilson trimmer, you can use their case holder that fits the .222 Magnum casings. I use the Wilson trimmer for my .204 Ruger casings.

If and when Winchester comes out with their .204 Ruger casings, I will be stocking up on those. I have had extremely good luck with Winchester brass in my 22-250 and want to try some for the .204 Ruger.

Bullets I have tested on the range include the 32 gr. and 40 gr. V-Max, the 35 gr. Berger FB HP and the 40 gr. Berger length tolerant bullet.

I use the 32 gr. V-Max as my prairie dog load with Remington 7 1/2 primers and H4895 powder and get 4,255 fps for muzzle velocity. I'll be testing this bullet with AA2230 powder again next spring.

I use H4895 powder with the 35 gr. Berger FB HP bullet for my coyote getting load. The muzzle velocity for this load is 4,220+ fps. I am still working on trying to find a good load for the 40 gr. V-Max (kind of gave up after shooting about 100 bullets and not finding the magic combination). The 40 gr. Bergers shows promise with H4895 and H322. However, both loads were well over the max listed on the Hodgdon Web site, so I'll be going back to the range and working with those bullets again next spring too.

Other powders I tried that all seemed to work pretty good with the 32 gr. V-Max bullets were Rel 10x, Benchmark, Win 748, and BL-C(2). I also tried VVN540 and Varget, but thought the other powders were better with this 32 gr. bullet.

I just read a posting over at the Saubier.com board by Gary Wenzl, that Ramshot now has load data for the .204 Ruger. Gary listed the following information:

32 gr. bullets - 24 gr. to 27 gr. of Xterminator
32 gr. bullets - 26 gr. to 29 gr. of Tac

40 gr. bullets - 21 gr. to 25 gr. of Xterminator
40 gr. bullets - 24 gr. to 27 gr. of Tac

Both max loads for the 40s are suppsed to get 3,800 fps.